


Belle of the Ball

by hrhrionastar



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-24
Updated: 2011-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-26 11:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/282784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the throneland Disney-ify Westeros challenge. Cersei goes to the ball, but she can't dance with her own Prince Charming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Belle of the Ball

Cersei Lannister paused theatrically on the threshold of the ballroom.

It wasn't her imagination—all heads turned to her.

She presented the perfect picture of a princess. Her gown appeared deceptively simple, white to symbolize purity and innocence. Her golden hair was elaborately braided around her head, vaguely suggesting a crown.

She knew, for her old nurse had told her so, that tonight she looked even more beautiful than the mother she had lost when she was a little girl, and whom she so nearly resembled.

Cersei's cheeks were flushed with triumph. She trusted to the Maiden to make certain her audience mistook it for girlish modesty.

"Lady, will you honor me?" asked Robert Baratheon, hero of the rebellion against the Targaryen madness.

He was an awkward dancer, Cersei already knew. But her upcoming marriage to Robert Baratheon would make her a queen.

She smiled graciously, and gave him her hand.

They swept across the floor, Cersei's gown belling out around her very satisfactorily.

Her smile was as sweet as her victory, and as the heady joy of her incipient escape from her childhood home.

King's Landing was glittery, filled with admiring crowds, and as different from dreary Casterly Rock as it was possible to be.

Best of all, it would be years before Cersei's ugly younger brother Tyrion arrived at court to make her life difficult with his already acerbic tongue.

Cersei spent the evening politely accepting congratulations and good wishes from Robert's friends and their future subjects. They were all very kind, except Eddard Stark, whose blank stare Cersei found vaguely unsettling.

But in the hour of the bat—the witching hour, as the smallfolk called it—Cersei was not with her fiancée, King Robert Baratheon.

She stood on the quiet balcony and breathed in the night, thankful for this moment of peace.

Beside her stood her own Prince Charming. He was watching her.

"You are so beautiful," Jaime whispered, putting his hands on Cersei's waist and pulling her back against him.

She leaned her head on his shoulder. Somehow the compliment sounded neither trite nor false, when Jaime said it.

She turned to him, searching his face in the shadows. His features were almost more familiar than her own.

"Tell me that you love me," she demanded.

"I'll always love you," Jaime responded at once.

The air was thick with their shared fear for the future. Cersei could not bear the thought that wedding Robert meant losing Jaime.

They had entered the world together, and would leave it the same way. Being apart from Jaime for too long made Cersei feel wrong and incomplete.

She closed the small but unbearable distance between them with a kiss, which quickly deepened.

If they were caught it would mean the end of everything, but regardless, it was only in Jaime's arms that Cersei felt truly safe.

He was her prince.


End file.
